In the printing of images on a print media using a printer device, it is a common problem for a user of a printer device to emulate a color from a physical color patch supplied by a customer for print articles. For example, in the textile industry, textile designers may give samples to a human printer, operating a printer device, for the human printer to specify the colors for printing on a print material by a printer device. Finding an exact match of a physical color in a device color space is a non trivial exercise and has the following problems:
Firstly, prior art solutions for color sensing require either a calorimeter or a spectrophotometer. Typically, these are stand alone devices which need to be connected to a printer. A color patch is placed in the calorimeter or spectrophotometer to measure the color, which is fed into the printer as a color specification in digital data. However, since the calorimeters or spectrophotometers are not integrated into a printer device and need to be connected, this makes the work flow more complex, and additionally they are expensive, in the range $250.00 to $10,000.00. However, depending upon the model and type of calorimeter or spectrophotometer used, these can be more accurate than in a built in color sensor provided with a printer device.
Secondly, prior art automatic color matching systems may not fulfill the color matching expectation of an expert or a demanding designer. Small variations in shade may be very significant for some applications, particularly with spot colors. To obtain an acceptable color match solution, customers may be led into a time consuming and print media consuming iterative trial and error process for matching a color printed onto a print media with a sample color on a physical patch.
One object of specific implementations according to the present invention is to reduce the time and print media usage in matching a color printed on a print media by a printer device, with an expected color, for example on a color patch.
Another object of specific implementations according to the present invention is to achieve accurate color matching, without a requirement for a color sensing apparatus such as a calorimeter or spectrophotometer.